Hello 2012

Well, it's official.... 2012 is here and I didn't make one post to the blog in 2011! I really dropped the ball there, but I guess the activity on Facebook and the discussion forum filled the void. Now with the nice plug article in Panama City Living, maybe we'll have some more traffic! For any new visitors who are interested, the best way to get involved with the club is to keep tabs on the "Next ECHO Event" listing to the left, Facebook (search echo brewers), or the email listserv (sign-up on the left). BTW, the forum seems down for some reason, I'll keep checking.

Here are couple pics from my most recent kegerator project finished in Dec. Plenty of room for kegs and bottles. Notice the homemade tap handles...

Update to the forum

Recently the club met at Beef's in Lynn Haven for the November business meeting. Owner Pat generously offered up a couple of their new 750's and we sampled a wide variety of new member brews as well. Planning has started for upcoming events for the next several months, so we encourage all to check out the discussion forum for the details. We also added a "Meeting Minutes" section to the forum, so everyone can check the minutes if they happen to miss a meeting. Here's the crew midway through the sampling session:

"THE BEAST" Jockey Box Project

As you may have heard, ECHO will be an attending club at this year's Emerald Coast Beer Festival in downtown Pensacola, September 10 and 11th. We will be serving 6 or so kegs of our homebrewed beers to the masses. In order to avoid a large trash can filled with ice, which is our usual means of cooling, we will be employing our recently acquired, 5 circuit antique jockey box! Weighing in at a hefty 43 lbs empty, "THE BEAST" uses an antique oak jockey box with an original Gunther tap from the early 20th century, in combination with Iron Mike's 5 circuit aluminum chiller plate. Kap'n Ken recently performed a great nautically-based restoration on the box, and it is ready to go.

Some insight from Ken: "We are still retaining the original tin part inside the hinged lid so you can see it when opened. I opted for the glassed/epoxy liner to save some time and make it more functional. If we want to go back to metal, the reconstruction was done to give us the option of taking it apart again. The reassembled finished size inside the liner is 18.5 X 9.5 X 9.5. Insulation on the sides and bottom is 1.5" thick R8 extruded polystyrene board which will not absorb moisture. It is a snug fit so it supports the liner top flange, sides and bottom. The entire assembly will spread the load evenly and should not compress with the load of ice and cold plate. After removing the steel screw heads from the outer box, I countersunk the original holes and purchased brass screws to replace all 18 of them. I figured the brass went with the theme, but if we want to use stainless and cover them with oak molding, that's fine too. It would be stronger, but a little more work. Since we originally cut the steel screws, the shanks are embedded in the box bottom piece. Thought about building a new bottom, but want to retain as much original box as possible. There was no way to get them out, so I set them deeper with a nail set and BFH (love that acronym IM) and rotated the box bottom 180 so the shanks did not line up with original holes. Then I completely epoxy sealed the box bottom so it can be installed/removed with the screws."

Jesse and Iron Mike "going at it" with the BFH.

Here's the box stripped apart. What a mess!

Kap'n Ken working his magic. A true craftsman.

All back together again. Traditional woodwork meets modern composite technology.